petticoat breeches, a Monterey cap upon his head, a red bandanna handkerchief around his neck, and gold ear-rings in his ears.  He had a long, plaited queue hanging down his back, and a great sheath-knife dangling from his side.  Another man, evidently the captain of the party, stood at a little distance as they lifted the chest out of the boat.  He had a cane in one hand and a lighted lantern in the other, although the moon was shining as bright as day.  He wore jack-boots and a handsome laced coat, and he had a long, drooping mustache that curled down below his chin.  He wore a fine, feathered hat, and his long black hair hung down upon his shoulders.

All this Tom Chist could see in the moonlight that glinted and twinkled upon the gilt buttons of his coat.

They were so busy lifting the chest from the boat that at first they did not observe that Tom Chist had come up and was standing there.  It was the white man with the long, plaited queue and the gold ear-rings that spoke to him.  “Boy, what do you want here, boy?” he said, in a rough, hoarse voice.  “Where d’ye come from?” And then dropping his end of the chest, and without giving Tom time to answer, he pointed off down the beach, and said, “You’d better be going about your own business, if you know what’s good for you; and don’t you come back, or you’ll find what you don’t want waiting for you.”

Tom saw in a glance that the pirates were all looking at him, and then, without saying a word, he turned and walked away.  The man who had spoken to him followed him threateningly for some little distance, as though to see that he had gone away as he was bidden to do.  But presently he stopped, and Tom hurried on alone, until the boat and the crew and all were dropped away behind and lost in the moonlight night.  Then he himself stopped also, turned, and looked back whence he had come.

There had been something very strange in the appearance of the men he had just seen, something very mysterious in their actions, and he wondered what it all meant, and what they were going to do.  He stood for a little while thus looking and listening.  He could see nothing, and could hear only the sound of distant talking.  What were they doing on the lonely shore thus at night?  Then, following a sudden impulse, he turned and cut off across the sand-hummocks, skirting around inland, but keeping pretty close to the shore, his object being to spy upon them, and to watch what they were about from the back of the low sand-hills that fronted the beach.

He had gone along some distance in his circuitous return when he became aware of the sound of voices that seemed to be drawing closer to him as he came towards the speakers.  He stopped and stood listening, and instantly, as he stopped, the voices stopped also.  He crouched there silently in the bright, glimmering moonlight, surrounded by the silent stretches of sand, and the stillness seemed to press upon him like a